only a small question as it seems after first night of trying this fight is not much different to the normal version.

Do you guys soak Annihilate for some vengeance? I tried it with cooldowns and had no problem surviving as i'm literally just standing around and try to help a bit with HoP or a Stun at the add's in P1, and P2 the dmg isn't too hard, so my vengeance level is aroung zero in p1 and not very high on p2. On Tranisition i soaked the Annihilate twice for a bit of vengeance + hammer of light as this seemed not to be a bad idea there in transition 1 where sometimes not even all people managed to get the buff in the first tries. I don't think the additional dmg is realy needed (average ilvl 577 probably , thats what wowprogress is telling me), but is there a real advantage to soak except for hammer of light, or is it just out of boredom and YOLO that tanks do it?

It's next to useless standing in annihilate DPS wise and pretty dangerous to fail. Doesn't give much vengeance either. If you want to contribute on P1, taunt the boss for 2-3 seconds when he does his shout, it'll give you about 50% vengeance which you can use to help a lot more. On phase 2 your vengeance will be at around 60% unless the other tank is solo tanking.

we have tried it a bit but it made dmg whise most sense for use to let one tank, solo tank phase 1, so we can get into first transition at around 93%.

in the first transition phase i take about 1-3 annihilates, and throw a lights hammer which will help healers a bit and for phase 2 i'm again mostly offtanking, i take it only once between whirl 2 and 3 just before the people get mind controlled to help them get out faster and again between whirl 3 and 4 for 2 or 3 stacks to let the debuff fall off the other tank, so we can get into transition 2 with around 26-28%. this way it's a bit borring for me as i'm not much tanking anything until 2 1/2 but thats ok so far and if it helps to down this guy and finish progress for this content i'm good with it

at the moment , after 3rd progressnight we are keeping whiping at the 2nd empowered whirl and sometimes in p3 which isn't that bad i think. so we may get it done next raidlockout

samsara wrote:we have tried it a bit but it made dmg whise most sense for use to let one tank, solo tank phase 1, so we can get into first transition at around 93%.

Actually you would increase DPS if the 2nd tank taunted for vengance during P1, since the OT would gain 50% of the MT's vengance. The MT could then just taunt right back or the OT could even taunt/salv.

The bottom line is an ideal tank's job is to simply survive without over-stressing healers and couple that with assisting in maximizing raid DPS.

Thus, if you can survive annihilates for extra vengeance safely, you should do that or you're simply wasting would-be added DPS for no reason (especially 25 man where you have a surplus of external damage reduction CDs available). If you have two tanks, you should share vengeance and taunt smartly to maximize vengeance between the two of yourselves, with the higher output DPS tanking more often (if not much more often). If you aren't doing this, you logically aren't contributing everything you could to the raid and simply don't have the right mindset.

On my alt, for example, I vastly tank the majority of 25H garrosh while ensuring my brewmaster offtank upholds his vengeance buff and taunts when I approach peak amounts of vengeance [i.e. after battle shouts in p1]. I soak every annihilate [because shield barrier is imbalanced with vengeance scaling] while calling for externals if needed, mainly vigilance from our DPS warriors.

I'm seeing that a lot of prot paladins specced into Sacred Shield for this encounter - maybe this was during the time period when people were still trying to figure out if EF was actually worth it, or because the players sped through the content so fast that they didn't have their set bonuses.

my tankpartner also skilled SS instead of EF on the kill, but on heavy tankdmg fights we both just feel a little bit safer with it, we also used it on heroic klaxxi and at least we killed it that way.

We also tried the suggested taunting for vengeance but in the end i decided not to do it as we had problems with tauntimunities and so i only taunted 1 sec before intermission1 , at the whirls in p2, and at 3-4 stacks in P3, that way our healers only had to focus on one tank and only one tank needed external cooldowns. We didn't had any dmg-problems and played around a strat where we have only 1 whirl after intermission2 and with only one whirl in P3. The soaking in the intermission worked good, but after dying on an anihilate without cloakproc i did it only with cooldowns for the first 3-4 anihilates and threw my lights hammer on the floor to support healers a bit.

Soaking Annihilates without externals is very easy and very possible and very safe. All you need is a heroic+ CDR trinket or an AoE reduction trinket from Protectors (CDR being preferable as the aoe reduction isn't all that helpful for most of the rest of the fight). All you need to do is make sure that you get a bubble buff, then use DP (Unglyphed, get a Sac/Vigi/PS if glyphed) and AD ~1s before the first annihilate hits. These will last you up through annihilate 3. Once AD/DP fall, use GoAK ~1s before the next smash hits (getting this as close as possible is helpful, but not necessary, though definitely need to pop it <2s before). This will last you up through annihilate 7 (the 7th will land in the last second or two of GoAK, don't panic). Right before the 8th lands, DP will come up again, if it's unglyphed that is all you will need for the rest of the phase and you can pair it with stoneform here if you are a dwarf. If you have DP glyphed, you will need externals during DP, but no other time, and an Ironbark is sufficient enough to cover that time. If you don't have a CDR trinket, use the AoE reduction as GoAK falls.

After you come out of that phase, salv yourself and toggle RF off, pop HA, and laugh as you burst yourself 200k higher on the meters. Soaking the annihilates is an ~20m damage gain on 10H, it's probably less on 25H, but still absolutely worth it.

Soaking the annihilates seems a lot less risky now that I've gotten used to the damage levels and healing that I need to do in order to sustain it. I look at it now as trading in my defensive cooldowns for extra damage. I still have the option of using my cooldowns in p1, but that's usually only if something goes wrong with the adds (likely them hitting me in the back).

You don't really need the cooldowns in phase 2, given how frequently tank swaps occur (banking holy power for the taunt lessens the need, plus the actual tanking duration is short enough that you don't get full value from the cooldowns). Soaking the annihilates seems to be the best use of these defensives.

Plus they'll be back up again for p3 when you might actually need them.